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Sunday, March 19, 2017

Caroline F. Pearson — House of Representatives ACA Repeal and Replace Legislation Could Increase Penalties for Failure to Buy Insurance

The bill makes significant changes to the ACA, including replacing the individual mandate penalty with a new penalty for failing to maintain continuous coverage. Both approaches are designed to insure that sick and healthy—as well as old and young—Americans pay into the insurance pool, which promotes affordability.

Under the ACA, the individual mandate imposes penalties on people who are uninsured for more than three months during the course of the year. Those penalties are adjusted based on income and are prorated based on the length of time an individual was uninsured.As proposed in the AHCA, the continuous coverage requirement would apply a premium penalty for individuals who have a gap in continuous coverage of 63 days or greater over 12 months. The penalty is equal to 30 percent of the monthly premium and would last for 12 months, starting in calendar year 2018.Because premiums are age adjusted, the penalty would be higher for older people and lower for younger individuals. Additionally, because the AHCA’s penalty is not tied to income, low-income individuals will pay significantly more under the AHCA’s penalty, compared to what they pay for not having insurance under the ACA....

10 comments:

What a mess they're making of healthcare. They're stuck between repealing and tinkering with Obamacare, and the tinkering they thought would improve it is turning it into a dog's breakfast. No surprise given that Trump didn't realise how difficult healthcare was. In the meantime working Americans get sick or die because they can't access the kind of care that most advanced countries deliver as a de facto human right.

The system is so dysfunctional and irrational that it is starting to devour itself. A rational system would deliver healthcare as a right. Workers would become more productive. Firms would become more productive and competitive. By any measure, other than the parasitic rip-everyone-off-and-pour-money-into-the-insurers-and-big-pharma-hands metric, the nation becomes better off. But no, that's unacceptable. How long can this possibly go on?

Want to fix health insurance? Stop buying it. The insurers will go out of business, and then we can have single payer. The penalty is designed to bully us into keeping this BS system on life support while we wither and die.

The opposing wing of the GOP sees it as unacceptable. They want a repeal of the ACA and a return to the status quo ante.

Right now there is is no replacement for the ACA that can pass, since the GOP will have to pass it without Dem help, which won't be forthcoming. It's possible that the GOP could just repeal the ACA but that would be risky for many GOP officeholders that would have to face angry voters.

This is eating up a lot of GOP political capital, so the Dems are just sitting back enjoying and taking pot shots.

Want to fix health insurance? Stop buying it. The insurers will go out of business, and then we can have single payer. The penalty is designed to bully us into keeping this BS system on life support while we wither and die.

Once the insurers are out of the way we can start fixing health CARE.

The problem is that people working for firms with more than a few dozen employees get their health care from the employer as part of their compensation package. This is what has to end to break the cycle.

Perhaps I misunderstood something, but didn't Trump, or at least his goonish spokespeople, come out saying that he's for the GOP plan, or at the very least wants to work with it? Which makes it a double mess: even Trump isn't for his own healthcare plan and edging towards the GOPher plan. Either way, it's turning into a murky mess. It's doubtful the Dems can make political gains out of this. They're so inept and beholden to identity politics and still effectively controlled by the "corporate democratic" wing. If the left of the party can organise and take the Dems back to the spirit of the New Deal, that's progress.

Otherwise, it'll just be another four years of tribal politics while the country suffers. That's how it looks from this side of the pond. We've got the same problem, although in our case the leftwing won the leadership of the Labour party but are under savage attack from their own rightwing. Admittedly, the leftwingers in Labour are pretty clueless as what to do next. It's all horribly pitiful stuff.

Tom: "It's possible that the GOP could just repeal the ACA but that would be risky for many GOP officeholders that would have to face angry voters."

From what I've seen, if they don't repeal it they're also going to face angry voters! Frankenstein's monster, baby! It'd be funny if it weren't so serious. The GOPhers have riled up their base and now they can't control them. They need a distraction. Gay Mexican Muslim Abortionists coming over the border might do the trick. Trump can create a new battalion of Minutemen to halt the inexorable progress of this satanic tide!

Republican morons are eating themselves and hopefully will implode again in time for the 2018 elections, but will we ever get public option or single payer? I want to be optimistic, but I think the politicians will keep prolonging this until they absolutely run out of other options.

Tom, he can call it what he wants, but he ends up owning it. What's he going to say when it all turns to shit, that it wasn't his plan but Ryan's? That won't play. Trump's pulled off a lot of crazy shit, but that's beyond anybody's abilities. The GOP plan he puts his name to will be Trumpcare, whether he likes it or not. It's not like he's going to speak out against it. And when 26 million or more Americans are left without healthcare, the costs skyrocket and the new plan is nothing more than Obamacare without the one or two redeeming features, when he promised to repeal it, what's he going to say? Four years is a long time and there isn't enough popcorn for this horror movie. Invest in corn futures...

At this point, it's unclear that the ACA is going to be either repealed or replaced. The GOP is deeply divided on this. The votes may not be there unless they can come up with an acceptable alternative. But the positions are pretty far apart.